Question: Do smelly farts sound funnier?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: In a previous post, we reported that there are actually three kinds of farts:
Type II: These are loud, wet, smelly farts.
Type I: These are less loud, less wet, less smelly.
Type 0: These are rare, “air-purifying” farts that actually improve air quality, as measured by VOC levels.
Since then, we have collected data on the funniness of individual farts, thanks to the efforts of a select subcommittee that voted on hundreds of different farts from our database. As a result, we can now determine whether funny farts are smellier. Here are the results:
The smelliest farts are, on average, not very funny. Indeed, the average Type II fart garnered only 0.09 votes. The average Type I fart, in contrast, got 0.21 votes, meaning that it was more than twice as funny as the average Type II fart. More impressively, virtually all farts that received three or more votes were of the Type I variety. And the funniest farts of all – those with 5 votes – tended to be Type 0 farts.
Previous work has attempted to understand why farts are so funny, but our results suggest a unique psychological perspective: Perhaps people enjoy the sound of farts that improve air quality, or at least those that don’t stink too badly.
From a physiological perspective, it is tempting to conclude that farts of longer duration, which are known to be the funniest, are those that are comprised mostly of air, so that their effect on the ambient smell is minimal.